Yesterday Lost

by Lorena McCourtney

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shadows. Now she’s seeing shadows.

  He paced the room restlessly, seeing shadows from the past of his own. Winter moonlight shafting through the trees as he carried the body deep into the woods. Slogging through wet, sloppy patches of snow, the metal-handled shovel icy in his hand. Heavy mud coating his shoes and weighting down his pants legs as he dug. Water seeping into the bottom of the narrow pit and making a soggy splash when he dropped her in. The sodden thud of clods of dirt hitting the body.

  He broke out in a sweat, but this was not like the hot sweat of exertion that had poured off him that night. This was a cold sweat of anger and apprehension.

  Everything had been going so great. She’d stepped into Kat’s shoes as if she’d been born in them. He’d thought he had it made.

  But now, shadows. And the necklace. How had she stumbled onto that? Eighty acres of ranch, and she heads like a homing pigeon to that particular spot.

  Where she’d found the necklace wasn’t necessarily where the body was buried, however, he reminded himself. He must remain calm so he could think clearly and not plunge into some disastrous mistake. The necklace could have been ripped off anywhere out in that jungle of brush and trees. So, even if she somehow found her way back to that spot, she wouldn’t necessarily be at the site of the body.

  Forget the necklace. It was a minor detail. What mattered were those dangerous shadows lurking in her head. He couldn’t afford to wait until they exploded into real memories of some other identity and life. Because that was when a whole new can of worms would fly open. Questions about where was the real Kat, why had no one ever heard from her, when and where was she last seen, who was she with. All that garbage.

  Everything, he thought resentfully, would have worked out so great if the new Kat’s memory had just stayed buried, if she had simply become Kat Cavanaugh. But she couldn’t just leave the past alone. No, she had to keep probing and examining and digging, not nearly so sweet and nice as he’d once thought.

  He’d never intended to kill the real Kat, of course. But she’d driven him to it. She’d made it happen. They could have had such a fantastic life together! He could have dumped the charade he was running here and become her full-time manager. And husband. His hands twitched and flexed with savage, bitter memory of what had really happened. How she’d scornfully rejected his love. How she’d laughed and made fun of him. Oh yes, she deserved what she got.

  But now he had this to deal with. Because the new Kat’s memory was on the verge of returning, no doubt about it. He wondered about her sometimes, who she was, where she’d come from, how she’d wound up on that beach in Oregon, why no one seemed to care that she was missing. But none of that really mattered.

  What mattered was that she had to die. Soon. While she and everyone else still believed she was Katy Cavanaugh.

  It wouldn’t be so difficult to straighten this out after all. His fists clenched. He was angry with her now. Women. Always troublemakers.

  ***

  Katy made the request in a phone call just a day later, early in the morning. She knew her request would puzzle and disturb Dr. Fischer, and she was right.

  “Is something wrong, Katy?” the doctor asked with instant concern.

  “No, I don’t think so. I was just hoping you could check on this for me. It would be difficult and awkward for me to do it here.”

  “Is it from your memory? Is anything coming back yet?”

  “Just a few odd shadows. Nothing recognizable. I’ll let you know if there’s any real breakthrough.”

  Dr. Fischer hesitated, as if she wanted to pry further, but finally she simply said, “Okay, then, you want me to go to Police Chief Derrickson and find out if any missing person reports have ever come in that match your description. From anywhere in the country.”

  “Right. Or descriptions of fugitive criminals that match it,” Katy added. That was also an unpleasant possibility. A past written in invisible ink could have anything in it.

  Dr. Fischer, ever shrewd, cut straight to the core. “Do you have some reason to doubt you are Katy Cavanaugh?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess I just want to cover all bases.”

  ***

  Dr. Fischer called back that evening. The Benton Beach police department had no missing-person or criminal-fugitive reports about anyone matching her description.

  So there was a big hole in her maybe-I’m-not-Katy-Cavanaugh theory, she thought as she hung up the phone. After all this time, if there was a missing “Daisy Doe from Denver,” or “Judy Jones from Juneau,” someone surely would have reported it. She couldn’t simply have dropped into a hole in space and time and been forgotten by everyone.

  Firmly she decided this was all a big relief. Mrs. L. hadn’t made a mistake in identifying her. Barry wasn’t a premeditated murderer, just a slick opportunist who had seen an unexpected chance to use her lost memory to rewrite the past and improve his situation both personally and professionally. She was Kat “Katy” Cavanaugh, she had a garden-variety amnesia, and she’d simply have to wait for her memory to return. And her momentary suspicion about Jace. How could she have a suspicion of him? Jace of all people, was paranoia at its wildest.

  ***

  She didn’t see Jace for a couple of days, but she attended services with him in the chapel on Sunday. After dinner he asked if she’d like to ride down to Redding with him and several of the boys the following day. Katy jumped at the opportunity. Maybe it would take her mind away from all the wild suspicions that nibbled like hungry predators at the edge of her mind.

  The van, with Joe driving, picked her up early the following morning. Joe invited Mrs. L. to come along, but she declined. She hadn’t been feeling well for several days and said she thought she’d just spend the day resting and napping.

  Definitely a good thing Mrs. L. hadn’t come along, Katy decided long before they reached Redding. The van’s automatic transmission was acting up, and sometimes the shift from gear to gear came with a neck-snapping lurch. The boys didn’t misbehave, Jace would never have allowed that, but they were boys: noisy, teasing, laughing, squabbling. They got thirsty, had to go to the bathroom, argued the merits of various teams and athletes, sneaked in sly punches and pinches.

  Jace grinned as a surreptitious burping contest erupted. “How about you? Want a herd of kids of your own?”

  For a moment an inexplicable shudder of pain rolled through her, as sharp as if she’d been ambushed with a blow to the back of the head. It was so shocking, so unexpected, so blinding, that she momentarily reeled with it. She clutched the arm rest to steady herself. Kat Cavanaugh had never suffered any pain connected with a child. Why had this innocuous question hit her so hard? But if she wasn’t Kat. . .

  No, she’d been down that dead-end road before. Get it through your stapled-up head, she commanded herself roughly, you are Kat Cavanaugh. Quickly, without answering Jace’s question, she turned to mischief-eyed Ramsey. “Knock, knock,” she said.

  He grinned as if they’d been telling each other jokes for years. “Who’s there?”

  And as the silly jokes flew back and forth, Katy set aside that peculiar jolt of pain and asked herself Jace’s question. Did she want children? Energetic, teasing, laughing, ever-into-mischief, squabbling children? Oh, yes!

  They were all still laughing when they arrived at the medical clinic in Redding, but Katy’s laughter suddenly froze. Jace slid the door of the van open, and the boys piled out. Jace leaned back inside, making arrangements with Joe about when to pick them up. He glanced at Katy, who was still staring at the clinic building.

  “Look familiar?” he asked.

  No, not familiar, but some peculiar hint of recognition flowed through her. A faint medicinal scent, a woman in a white lab coat hurrying out the door, an invisible aura of busy, modern medical technology.

  The shadows – no, a single shadow – moved inside her head again. It was the smallest f
igure, with head bowed, crying, crying. Katy didn’t understand, but tears filled her own eyes, and panic trembled in her heart.

  “Katy, Katy!” Jace shook her lightly. She blinked and swallowed. “Shadows?” he asked.

  She nodded dumbly. He glanced at the boys waiting, as if he were being pulled in two directions.

  She patted his arm. “You go on and take care of the boys.”

  By now she knew the reason for this trip. Each of these boys had a medical problem needing special attention. Ramsey had a slightly deformed foot that should have been treated when he was a baby but could possibly still be corrected by surgery. The other boys had problems ranging from severe allergy attacks to a potentially serious heart murmur.

  “It’s faded away now,” she added, trying to sound calm and in control of herself.

  ***

  Joe dropped Katy at a shopping mall across town, and she enjoyed the morning wandering through the stores even though her mind kept slipping back to those brief moments outside the clinic. She bought silky flowered material and yarn for Mrs. L., a couple of books for herself, and bubble gum for the boys. She didn’t intend to get anything special for Jace, but a certain rakish straw hat looked so perfect that she couldn’t resist buying it.

  Mrs. L. hadn’t been able to remember the name of the restaurant to which she’d taken Katy to meet her friend or friends in Redding, but she’d thought it had “mountain” in it. Katy searched the restaurant listings in a phone book but found nothing that sounded likely, and she finally abandoned her earlier idea of trying to jog her memory by visiting the restaurant. Her memory had already been jogged today, at the clinic. But what did it mean?

  Joe picked her up about one o’clock at the agreed-upon mall entrance. Jace met the van at the door of the medical center and said the boys wouldn’t be through for another fifteen or twenty minutes yet. He went back inside, and Joe parked the van on the shady side of the parking lot. Katy didn’t mind the wait. The temperature outside must have been over a hundred, but the air-conditioned van was cool and comfortable. She offered Joe an old-fashioned lemon drop from the sack she’d bought at a candy shop.

  Making idle conversation she asked, “Have you been with the school long?”

  “I knew Jace back in his football days. I worked for the last team he was with, taking care of the uniforms and equipment. Until I got fired for drinking and messing up on the job once too often.”

  Katy glanced at Joe in surprise. That he wasn’t an educated man was fairly obvious, but he was so reliable, and the school depended on him for so much that she’d never have guessed this darker past.

  Joe smiled, as if he could read her mind. “Most of the guys on the team looked on me like I was just another piece of broken-down equipment, but Jace was always good to me. And if it weren’t for him I’d sure be homeless or in jail or dead by now.”

  “Getting this job changed you?”

  Joe shook his head vehemently. “No. The Lord changed Jace, and Jace came looking for me. He dragged me out to the ranch, sobered me up, and gave me the job. Then he introduced me to the Lord, and the Lord changed me. Because he cares.”

  What Jace’s friend had done for him, Jace had done for someone else, Katy mused. Like an endless chain of God’s love and caring.

  If you wanted to believe in a loving, caring God, she added scornfully to herself, her familiar resentment rising like an angry buzz saw to break that naïve “chain of God’s love and caring” thought.

  “I guess I’d do almost anything for Jace,” Joe added as he selected another lemon drop. He spoke as casually as if he were commenting on the weather, but Katy heard the immovable depths of bedrock loyalty in the simple statement.

  “And Mrs. L?” she asked lightly.

  Joe grinned self-consciously, even a hint of embarrassed color rising to his leathery old cheeks. “Lenore’s a fine woman.”

  Delighted by the unexpected blush, Katy couldn’t resist a bit of teasing. “Maybe we’ll hear wedding bells one of these days?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  Joe’s hasty sidestep surprised Katy. Did it mean he didn’t want to marry Mrs. L, or the other way around? She couldn’t ask such a rude question, of course, but Joe unexpectedly volunteered a bit of information.

  “Evan would have to approve before Lenore’d do it, of course, and I guess the truth is that there’s no love lost between Evan and me.”

  That comment also surprised Katy. What she personally knew of Evan came only from her long phone conversations with him, but he’d been wonderfully warm and friendly and patient with her. “That’s too bad. He’s been so nice to me, talking about our childhood together and trying to help me remember.”

  Joe shrugged his bony shoulders. “Memories aren’t all so great. Sometimes we’d be better off without ‘em.”

  An odd observation, Katy thought, but all she said was, “Did you and Evan have some disagreement?”

  “No, not really. I never actually said anything to him because I didn’t want to make Lenore mad, but I’m sure he knows I figure he takes advantage of her.”

  “But he calls her often and comes to see her whenever he can,” Katy protested. “That’s more than a lot of sons do.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure he latched onto most of the money your folks left Lenore, and I don’t think that’s right. They wanted to make her old age secure, not supply Evan with the money to buy some expensive car. Have you ever priced a Porsche 911?”

  “But Evan didn’t get the money,” Katy said quickly. “Mrs. L. had an elderly aunt who needed an expensive organ transplant, and that’s where it went. You know what a generous and caring person she is. And Evan is a very successful businessman. I’m sure he can afford to buy his own expensive car.”

  “I didn’t know anything about the sick aunt,” Joe conceded. He tilted his head, as if he were still skeptical, but then he nodded slowly. “But it sounds like something Lenore’d do, all right.”

  “And she wouldn’t be one to brag about her generosity.”

  “I guess Evan probably isn’t such a bad sort.” Joe grinned ruefully. “Maybe he’s never been too fond of me because he figures I’m just some ex-alcoholic old gold digger out to take advantage of his mother.”

  Katy smiled and impulsively reached over to squeeze his arm. “I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  His sideways glance was teasing. “I’ve already put in a few good words for you with Jace. Though I don’t really think you need ‘em.”

  ***

  They went to a fast-food taco stand for lunch. It was busy and crowded, and the boys, tired of being cooped up in the medical clinic for hours, clamored to eat outside at a picnic table on the patio. The heat was already getting to Katy, and she bypassed the outdoor eating area and headed for the van with her burrito. On the way she had to step aside to keep from almost getting run over by a trio of shaved-headed guys wearing baggy pants and sloppy T-shirts emblazoned with cartoonish figures of overdeveloped women. The swaggering eighteen- or nineteen-year-olds, with muscles bulging from the ripped-armhole T-shirts, instantly made Katy uneasy, but she reminded herself that people shouldn’t be judged by clothing and appearance. Just because these three looked like outlaw teen-gang hoodlums didn’t mean they were. After all, not so long ago she’d had a shaved head herself.

  Then one of the boys made such a lewd remark to her that her face burned. So much for being nonjudgmental, she fumed as she hurried on to the van. They were a mini-gang of hoodlums. At the van door, she glanced back to see where the three toughs were headed.

  They took the picnic table next to Jace and Joe and the boys. In the process of climbing to sit on the tabletop, feet on the bench, one guy knocked off the new straw hat Katy had just given Jace. It could have been an accident, but Katy didn’t think so. She clutched her soft drink container so hard that it slopped liquid on her pants, uneasy about a situation that suddenly looked ominous. Ja
ce, however, simply picked up the hat and placed it on his lap while he bowed his head to offer the before-meal prayer. One of the toughs must have made some nasty crack during the prayer because Ramsey’s head jerked up, his expression startled. Jace must also have heard the remark, but he didn’t let on. He simply finished the prayer and started distributing burritos and tacos.

  Katy relaxed slightly and climbed into the van. Although the three guys were obviously psyched for trouble, Jace just as obviously didn’t intend to accommodate them. She ate more hurriedly than usual, and suspected the boys did too. They piled their trash on a couple of trays, and Ramsey and another boy carried them toward the trash containers.

  The toughs stood up, one of them making an elaborate, macho display of squashing their three drink cartons together. He casually planted the cartons on Ramsey’s tray. Ramsey offered no objection and continued on to the trash container, but the tray accidentally tilted and the crumpled cartons slid. The tough sneered something and shoved Ramsey toward the fallen cartons. The tray crashed, and the small, slight boy tumbled to the concrete patio. Horrified, Katy saw the guy’s big hand close around Ramsey’s head, as if he were going to yank the boy to his feet by the hair.

  So fast that Katy hardly knew how it happened, Jace grabbed the guy, swung him around, and smashed a fist into his face. The kid reeled groggily but shook his head like an enraged bull and roared back as if he’d just been waiting for a chance to launch an all-out brawl. He crashed a fist low in Jace’s midsection, followed it with a solid blow to his eye. But even as brawny, tough, and mean-tempered as the big kid was, he was no match for Jace’s fury and maturity and hard experience. A moment later he plunged to his knees, arms clamped over his ears as he uselessly tried to protect his head from Jace’s hard blows. One of his friends jumped into the fray, but with no more than a contemptuous glance Jace smashed a kick into the guy’s groin, a blow that even Katy recognized as down-and-dirty street-brawl technique. The guy howled in pain and sank to his knees, and Jace hammered another blow into the side of the first one’s head.